• Community Soapbox - Character Interactions in Make Your Mark, Twilight and Spike in G5, Stick to Ponies for G5, and More!


    If you are bored and have pony opinions, send a soapbox in! We are low on them again for the first time in a while. As always, these are the opinions of fandom members, not us here at EQD. If you'd like to submit your own soapbox, hit up this post for infos.

    Have some headlines:

    • Twilight and Spike's possible involvement in G5
    • Friendship is Magic Miniseries Equestria Girls
    • MYM: At Least the Character Interactions Were Cute
    •  G5 Needs to Stick to Ponies
    And go read them below!



    Twilight and Spike's possible involvement in G5
    By: FlareGun45


    Hey, brahs! It's been quite a while hasn't it? So after watching Make Your Mark, guess who has another batch of theories? Some things never change, huh? XP Be aware, this soapbox does have spoilers!

    So, when I first saw that villain, that Nightmare-like villain, yunno who my first guess was? Twilight. Princess Twilight Sparkle gone Twinananas! Why do I think it's her? Well, as a pony who's HUGE on friendship, I don't think losing her friends really did her good, like not at all. She probably became so desperate or alone, and maybe either snapped or messed with dark magic.

    I know this Nightmare Twilight doesn't look that much like Twilight, but Nightmare Moon looked pretty different from Luna as well. Maybe this is might reflect on Sunny Starcoat's lesson on losing her own dad, her very best friend. That would make a pretty deep episode, but this generation does look like it can touch into deep territory, especially if it implied death in the pilot!

    Now like any major theory I have, of course Spike is involved, and you're right: I do believe Spike is the one who sent that egg to Maretime Bay! Was it by accident, or on purpose? I have no clue. Is this dragon a descendent or his, a son, a grandson, a great-grandson - that is also uncertain. But I do think that Spike send that egg to both teach Sparky friendship, and also have the ponies learn a great deal of friendship themselves.

    Not only that, but if Twilight has gone bad due to the loss of her friends, the only thing that wouldn't make her snap was Spike, which could mean that he might've left her side at one point, and went off on his own, and because of that, no one could help her, and thus, Nightmare Sparkle is born in this world! So this egg could be his plan on saving his friend!

    Who would think that two veterans from an older generation would have the biggest friendship conflict yet in a newer generation? Let's see how this turns out!

    Also, I really hope Sparky is blood-related to Spike. The Spike bloodline must live on!

     


    Friendship is Magic Miniseries Equestria Girls
    By Double C


    For this miniseries we will talk about Equestria Girls.

    While Equestria Girls had a rocky start but has grown popular along with their pony counterparts with better stories and character development. It’s still sad that Hasbro canceled it without a proper ending instead of leaving use on a cliff hanger. There were plenty of things that season 3 could have shown if it got the chance besides human Sunset.

    One thing that Hasbro could have done was seeing the pony version of each human. There are fewer characters of Equestria Girls who we have seen ponified but hasn’t gone through only in the comics. They could have at least make rough drafts of what they pony version look like since we know what their cutie marks are goanna be. The ones who did so fare are Ragamuffin, Juniper Montage, Wallflower Blush, and Gloriosa Daisy all are earth ponies. The ones I would have like to see ponified are Sandalwood, Micro Chips, Dirk Thistleweed, Sunny Flare, Sour Sweet, Indigo Zap, Sugarcoat, Lemon Zest, Vignette Valencia, Kiwi Lollipop, and Supernova Zap.

    The Magical Geodes were a great addition to the girl’s power up after Legend of Everfree. But the questions fans have been asking is how did they get to the human world? We know in Spring Breakdown that there are any possible portals from Equestria which means either the magic attached themselves to the geodes or someone brought them. Celestia could have a book about them in the secret part of the Canterlot library or somewhere only she knows about.

    Adagio Dazzle, Aria Blaze, and Sonata Dusk were the best villains of Equestria Girls after Sunset was reformed. They were MIA after Rainbow Rock but reappeared in Sunset’s Back Stage Pass while singing in their music video Find The Magic. I was surprised Discord didn’t bring them in to team up with the Mean 3 which would have been a good finale battle at the end and another confirmation that they are cannon in the show.

    Abacus Cinch is another good villain that has been MIA since being replaced as Principle at Crystal Prep by Cadance. She fits the villain who seeks revenge on Sci-Twi and all of Canterlot High and perhaps their pony counter parts. She could have served as the final villain in the conclusion of Equestria Girls where she collected all the magic and wants to rule both worlds.

    Equestria Girls like in FIM has many shipping opinions which started with Twilight and Flash and has grown with other characters through many materials. My favorites are SciFlash, Rarimuffin, Sandalshy, and AppleDirk. I have wandered in a previous soapbox, could ships in Equestria Girls happen with their pony counter parts?

    The one thing that would have been both funny and awkward is an encounter between Twilight and Timber. One that I can see happened is one on deviantart by jucamovi1992 where Timber mistaken Twilight for Sci-Twi and flirts with her then Flash over protectively beats him up. For Flash Sentry and FlashLight fans like me, it would be something we would have payed to see happen.

     


    MYM: At Least the Character Interactions Were Cute
    By: Belltoy

    After seeing the trailers for Make Your Mark, I didn't have a whole lot of faith that it would pull off anything better than one of those B movies Disney used to release years after one of their animated blockbusters. In the end I feel like I was kinda right. Make Your Mark didn't look good. Animationwise it was very stiff and the lighting was completely off. There were a lot of times when a characters expression was different from what they were portraying just because the shadows hid their face in a specific way. And don't even get more started on that new villain. Her entire scene looked like it was lit by someone who just discovered shadows for the first time and slapped them on there randomly. I really hoping her actual model looks less janky when we get her outside of the darkness in the future.

    Despite that though, the characters were cute. Their interactions were believable usually. It's something G4 excelled at and I think they are pulling it off here as well. Pipp went from a character I despised in the movie to being less awful, and I feel like Zipp in particular had a huge boost in likeability. She already did well in the actual movie, but they are proving time and time again that she's not just the token tomboy and actually has a lot of other interesting features that make her less of a cardboard cutout. The only character I was dissapointed in was Izzy, but she had a ton of characterization time in the movie so maybe just being a secondary comedy relief in this one was good enough to let other characters get some limelight.

    Anyway, I hope they fix the lighting for the actual series as that was probably the most jarring part of this for me personally. We will have to see how it plays out later in the year. Friendship is Magic evolved over time too (some would argue for the worse) so it's definitely a thing that happens. Hopefully they figure out all their tools and learn from this and deliver something better. 


    G5 Needs to Stick to Ponies
    By: Codrio Blacksmith
     
    The last 2 seasons of G4 were painful for me. I came to pony for ponies. Not griffons, not changelings, not yaks, just pony. Unicorns, Pegasus, and Earth are what I want to see. The fact that the final two years of our beloved pony cartoon, the last two years of mane 6 and friends, were handed over to a bunch of nonpony characters was really disappointing. So many potentially amazing episodes missed becuase we had to focus on a bunch of characters that frankly, weren't that interesting in a setting that was Equestria girls tier. You have this beautiful world to explore and you end up stuck in ponyville at a school to sell playsets for characters you don't even bother making when the playsets flop. Please if nothing else make G5 stick to ponies. No yaks, no huge dragon focus, no hippogriffs. Just give us a good pony cartoon with cute horses using their hooves for things and keep side characters to the side. We don't need a new mane cast. Especially when you never even got around to actually selling toys of them cause then it just makes no sense. I'd get it capitalistically that hasbros gotta make the money, but it feels like we got all the bad sides of a "this is just a show to sell toys" and they just stopped halfway.